No solidarity with Israeli journalist....

This has happened before - Tariq Aziz, the Vice-Premier of Iraq also refused to answer an Israeli journalist's questions.

Iran’s ambassador to France , Ali Ahani, has refused to address a question by an Israeli journalist in Paris to the indifference of journalists and press conference organisers from the center for foreign journalists CAPE in the French national radio buildings.

“What can you say to Israelis whom are scared of your nuclear bomb after you president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel should be wiped off the map? Is that why you’re developing the bomb?,” Or Heller, correspondent in Paris for the Israeli Maariv newspaper, asked the ambassador.

“If the United States attack Iran would you launch missiles at Israel or other countries of the region?,” he added.

The ambassador refused to answer and the journalist microphone was handed immediately to the next reporter, a Lebanese, who asked her question on ties between Iran and Syria.

The Israeli journalist protested, stressing that the conference was held in Paris and not in Tehran and asked from colleagues to leave the press room out of solidarity.

A Greek and a Jewish journalist followed Or Heller out but the other reporters stayed at the press conference, most of them showing no interest in the incident, some of them hushing the journalist down.

“He knew the Iranian president wouldn’t answer his question. Why did he ask it any way. He is simply a provocateur,” asked one journalist who claimed to be working for French national television over the past 30 years.